The Jacksonville-based Delores Barr Weaver Policy Center and state and national child advocates have denounced proposed state legislation that would authorize child sex-trafficking victims to be “locked up” in treatment centers for up to 10 months.

The proposed amendment to the Safe Harbor Act would, among other things, create a “secure safe house” pilot program for sexually exploited children “with the greatest needs,” according to a House staff analysis of the bill.

But such involuntary detention would only delay children’s recoveries by isolating them, making them feel victimized again and like criminals, and hampering counselors’ ability to win their trust, said Lawanda Ravoira, the policy center’s president and CEO.

“Legislators are well-intended but uninformed in terms of the consequences,” she said. “They are making policy decisions that won’t work.”

Those policy decisions have support in high places, as lawmakers struggle to find answers to Florida having the third-highest rate of child sex-trafficking in the country. Jacksonville is third in the state.

House Speaker Will Weatherford made the proposed amendment one of his priorities, said state Rep. Gayle Harrell, R-Port St. Lucie, who chairs the House Healthy Families Subcommittee. That panel drafted the proposed amendment and approved it unanimously March 12.

Similar legislation has been filed in the Senate.

According to the House bill staff analysis, the secure safe house pilot program “is intended for those sexually exploited children with the greatest needs and for whom no less restrictive placement has been or will be effective in addressing the effects of severe abuse, violence, trauma or exploiter control endured by the child.” Such children are more likely to run away and to try to recruit others into child sex trafficking, Harrell said.

They will receive personalized care and treatment, from five days to 10 months, she said.

She acknowledged that the concept is “somewhat controversial” but said she hopes the pilot program will become a national model.

“We are taking a big step. We are doing this with the best interests of the child at heart,” she said. “I think we’re on the right track ... We are going to be watching it carefully.’”

The Safe Harbor Act, which took effect January 2013, focused on referring victims to services. But the secure safe house concept would have the effect of treating them like criminals, Ravoira said.

Child victims of sex trafficking are victims of child abuse and child rape. Most are girls ages 12 to 14. No other child-abuse and rape victims are locked up, she said.

To do so would be “really bad public policy” and set a harmful precedent, said Roy Miller, founder and president of the Children’s Campaign, a Tallahassee-based advocacy group.

“Sets the pimps and johns free, locks the girl up,” she said. “This is just a gross injustice, to lock up the victim.”

Also, the measure would amount to violating the child’s human rights, said Malika Saada Saar, co-founder and executive director of the Washington-based Human Rights for Girls Project.

“These children are on the razor’s edge of child abuse and child rape in this country ... and you have to treat them accordingly and treat the child as any other victim,” she said. “The concept of taking a child who was subjected to being owned, raped and abused and putting them behind bars does not make sense.”

Also, the secure safe house concept goes “against the federal tide” of treatment initiatives being discussed in Washington, which take a child-welfare approach, she said. The Safe Harbor Act was “innovative,” but the amendment would be “regression,” she said.